


Senseless

by thelittlestwitchling (polyxena_chatoyant)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Sense8 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sense8 (TV) Fusion, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canonical Character Death, Drug Use, F/F, F/M, Gen, I promise they're not bad, I'm so sorry, M/M, Multi, Other, Poliakoff was the only canon character I could find suitable, Recreational Drug Use, So many OCs, Violence, and he's only a last name mentioned in the fourth book, and i have an 8tracks playlist for this, basically the story i wanted to read but couldn't find so i wrote it instead, but the story will be in chapter 8 by the time i can make it public, chapters will be longer soon i promise, haha - Freeform, i have a google spreadsheet that i can share to anyone who wants it, i'm too invested in this fic, lots of canon ships, please enjoy i'm sorry about these tags, so he's basically become an oc, so then i wanted all canon hp characters, that didn't work out at all, this is basically about a cluster that was birthed by Angelica before the August 8 Cluster, which I swear is canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-13
Updated: 2015-11-13
Packaged: 2018-05-01 09:21:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5200550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polyxena_chatoyant/pseuds/thelittlestwitchling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angelica Turring birthed more than just the August 8 Cluster. (Set about a month before the Pilot of Sense8)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cover

**Author's Note:**

> [ Planning and Table of Contents](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1D-RXZg9ruCNfnLeVUkW6Y4fU-OhxmlkyetWRut1vWeU/edit?usp=sharing)

**April 26th, 2015**

After so long working for Whispers, Angelica knew that she was in the wrong. Everything that she had been telling her for weeks now that she needed to get out, to run away from Whispers. It was only until now that the urgency of it hit it, with the birth of yet another Cluster.

Angelica twisted and turned on the bed, looking to Jonas for comfort. He held her tightly, whispered in her mind platitudes and sweet nothings. They were coming, and she had stayed in the bedroom rather than go into the medical rooms. This Cluster would be the last birthed under Whispers’ orders, but they would not be hunted down so easily.

“Do you see them?” Jonas rocked her as she convulsed.

“Yes,” she gasped out, sweat glistening under fluorescent lighting. “They’re…”

_She’s standing on a beach. The sky is cloudy gray, the waves foamy and still, the beach covered in sea shells. A small cottage rests on a nearby hill, life bustling through it. Angelic looks up into the window of a kitchen, and meets wide, acidic-green eyes behind round glasses, takes in the beat-up look to his face, the fading bruises and split lip. She loves him so._

_She is sitting on a bench outside a beautiful white castle, in a garden filled with crystal fountains. People dressed in light blue, holding wands in their hands, move through it at their own paces. The sky is cerulean blue, not a cloud in sight, and a girl is standing near a nymph-shaped rose bush. Angelica smiles at her, feeling the girl’s confusion. Her dark skin compliments the blue of her dress, and her frizzy brown is escaping an over-the-shoulder braid haphazardly done._

_She is in a coffee shop, surrounded by a myriad of people holding beverages or baked goods. She is delighted to see a scruffy looking man holding a heart-felt conversation with a woman in a hijab. They look so happy. The man looks up, pale skin becoming a shade paler in panic, nostrils on his large nose flaring in fear, as the pupils in his blue eyes widen. Oh, she didn’t mean for that, her darling._

_She is in an underground room, pink and red smoke coating the ceiling thickly. An asian boy in his underwear leant over a cauldron in a corner, which was pouring out pink smoke. His black hair occasionally fell into his eyes, where he would run his hand through it to clear his vision. Hanging from his lips was a rolled joint, red smoke puffing out of his nostrils and lips as he inhaled and exhaled. Angelica smiled indulgently._

_Angelica stood in a dorm living room. Smoke billowed out of the kitchen and a fire-alarm raged. A young black women jerked awake at the coffee table where she had fallen asleep over her books, pushing her curls out of her face. Tawny eyes made contact with Angelica’s form and a scream sounded from her lips. Angelica laughed._

_A Korean girl’s apartment was covered in swatches of cloth and textbooks. Sleeping on the floor surrounded by clothing sketches and charcoal pencils lay a dark skinned girl with auburn-blonde hair. She snored loudly and tossed in her sleep. Angelica knelt down to brush a lock of hair from her face, sighing contently._

_The dark bedroom in the sea-side village held a bed, where two people wrapped around each other tightly, limbs tangled and faces inches apart. Angelica made a small happy sound at the sight of the plump, dark skinned man, whose arms wrapped around the woman next to him. He mumbled in his sleep and pulled the woman closer. A cat was nestled at their feet._

_She stood in a large room filled with hammocks with a portion of it made into a gym-like area. Banners of red, yellow, and blue hung from the ceiling and battered children filled it. Some were sleeping, some were sparing with magic, but the important one was leaning over a map of a castle with a group of teens. He had long blonde hair and green eyes, and was holding hands with a short-haired boy next to him. The boy looked up._

_“Who-”_

“Beautiful,” Angelica gasped again, crying. “So beautiful. My children.”

Jonas smiled, holding her face in his hands as she clung to him. “Of course. They’re yours, after all.”

There was shouting somewhere, somewhere far away but much too close. Both frowned, one in worry and the other in exhaustion.

Time’s up.


	2. Chapter One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Colin Creevey is a good Occlumens. He's an even-better narrator.

_** April 30th, 2015 ** _

Colin’s closed eyes flit under their lids, his breathing even and body swaying in his hammock.The Sleeping Area has a silencing charm on it, so that those inside it don’t have to deal with the noise and mayhem of the Room; but despite this all, Colin isn’t sleeping. The migraine that rages in his head and has his stomach rolling makes it impossible. Seamus is worried about him, Colin knows this. It started four days earlier, with the vision of a blonde woman in the Room that no one else saw.

This in itself is cause for worry. The entire Room knows about it, he was quite vocal and open. It brought back bad memories for those who went to the Battle of the DoM two years ago. Colin didn’t tell them everything that’s happened afterwards. He’s only told Seamus.

He feels things that aren’t there, hears noises no one else can, and sometimes he has glimpses of people he doesn’t know. Seamus had pulled him aside yesterday afternoon to quietly inform him that he’d been speaking a foreign language for the past ten minutes.

It’s all quite worrying, and Colin would have been more worried if he hadn’t looked into Occlumency. This past year in the Room has instilled a fear and possession of secrets like no other in the DA, so all who were able to pick it up from a book started to learn, and from then teach. It’s only because of this that he’s able to look inside himself to see what was happening.

He couldn’t explain it though. Suddenly, his mind had seven other doors, doors that opened easily to him, though he didn’t step through. Things floated through regardless. Memories that weren’t his own, habits that he’d never procured, languages he’d never spoken. Smells of things that weren’t in the air.

Somehow, his mind was connected to seven other people. He just didn’t understand it at all! What kind of magic could do something like this? Was it a Curse? A nasty potion? He’d asked Seamus to look into it for him covertly.

His thoughts were interrupted by someone climbing into the hammock beside him. Speak of the devil…

Colin flicked his eyes open and exited his mind in the same moment, a skill he’d grown into. “‘Ello, Seam…”

“Col,” Seamus smiled at him, face bruised where he’d gotten hit sparring. “How are you feeling?”

“Perfect, actually,” he said truthfully. Sunshine that wasn’t there was brushing his skin wonderfully, and distantly he heard the sound of waves. It was quite soothing. “One of the others is at a beach, I think.”

Seamus wrapped his arms around Colin’s waist, pulling the smaller boy into his personal space and tangling their legs together. “Oh, s’that so?”

Colin’s lips tingled where Seamus’ breath brushed over them. “Mm. But what about you? You smell like a pig.”  
“Ernie hits like bull,” his boyfriend answered, and then winced. “Gonna have bruises tomorrow.”

Colin smiled, slow and impish. “I can think of some bruises you’d more like to have…”

Seamus grinned roguishly, slipping one of his legs up between Colin’s thighs. “S’that so, Mr. Creevey?”

Colin laughed, “Don’t call me that, Finnigan! You sounded like McGonagall!”

“You sure about that?” Seamus questioned, before brushing their lips together and beginning the push-and-pull of a bloody good snog.

Kissing Seamus was like kissing fire. You had to find the safe point and then stay there. Colin looped his fingers together around Seamus’ head and wondered where that safe point was, because all he was doing was getting hotter and hotter. The pleasure wasn’t all his, either. One of the seven was doing something that was adding to it, doubling it, tripling it - Colin could geuss. So he rolled until Seamus was under him and grappled for his wand, silently casting and obscurification charm.

Seamus groaned, a low guttural sound in his throat as Colin straddled him and pressed down into him. His own body was reacting to Colin in all the ways Colin loved. They’d done this before, but Colin had never had another’s pleasure in his mind before, and it was addicting. Merlin, if he could stay like this forever.

Clothing seemed like a stupid first year’s idea at this point as he pulled off the wool jumper his dad gave him last christmas. Pulling at Seamus’ shirt buttons, his breath hitched when Seamus’ hands slipped into his pants and grabbed at his arse. The next few minutes were a blur of clothing and skin until they needed another obscurification charm and silencing charm. The others would be grateful for it later.

 

* * *

 

Neville Longbottom was one of the better hand-to-hand fighters in the DA, which came as a surprise to all of them. Colin watched him with sharp eyes, taking in eye flicker and slight hint of movement. There was a group of students around them, watching, taking it in, ready to give advice when it was over. Colin slowly stripped of his jumper for the second time that day, inadvertently showing off hickeys and finger-shaped bruises that got a few catcalls, and brought his hands up before his face in a chopped-up version of a boxer’s stance.

Neville rolled up his shirt sleeves. His foot twitched.

Colin ducked out of the way of round-house kick, swinging his leg as quick as an avis charm to hit Neville on the one leg he was standing on still. Neville dropped with a grunt but caught himself on the palms of his hands as Colin got out of reach. The adrenaline was pumping through his veins like he’d taken a hit of Mandrake Moxy. And just like that, there was soundless click inside of him, and he was looking at things through different eyes. He hadn’t left the room, and he knew instinctively that his body was still the one moving, but when Colin looked at his hands, he saw the pale fists of a man with scarred knuckles, and somehow knew in his heart that the man’s face was scruffy and his hair hidden under a beanie that had seen better days. He wondered if Neville was looking at his own green eyes or the Other’s blue.

They moved too quickly for Neville to comprehend, leg knocking into his side with strength Colin certainly didn’t have. And then, when Neville didn’t go down by was winded, their fists were next. One to the cheek bone, where Neville would have a lump for days before it even began to fade, and another to the opposite side of his chin. They heard the crack of a chip breaking inside Neville’s mouth and waited for a silent moment for the larger boy to stand up. Instead, he tapped the sparring mat, and they relaxed their stance, straightening their legs and stretching lightly as they always did after a fight-

“Holy fuck, Colin,” Justin Finch-fletchy marvelled at him as the students swarmed in to give pointers. “Where’d you learn that, mate?”

And Colin - only Colin - looked at him sideways and shrugged, catching eye contact with Seamus. “Dunno. Saw it in a Muggle film once, I think.”

Seamus was worried. The way he was biting his bruised lip showed it, and Colin, not for the first time, hoped desperately that his situation wasn’t some kind of curse. He didn’t think he could really part with the people at the edges of his mind. Not when they were so intrinsically familiar. The Other from before was still creeping in the edge of his vision. When Colin turned to look, though, he’d disappeared.

“Come on, then,” Justin pulled him over to where Ginny had returned with the food from the Kitchens and Aberforth’s. “Lunch is here!”

The whole of the Room gathered in the commons area, which also worked as a war room when they needed to plan skirmishes and outings. People sat everywhere they could, crowding in at the edges, halfway in the war room and out. Bread, jam, and butterbeer was passed around until everyone had a handful of each. Colin was smothering his bread in strawberry jam when Seamus pulled him over to a corner and sat down against the wall, pulling him into the taller boy’s lap.

For a moment, they sat quietly and just savored in each other's presence and the food. Colin could see Dennis across the room, and the sight of his brother safe made him relax even further. Every day was a challenge as an older sibling. Seamus leaned his forehead into Colin’s neck, yawning tiredly. The irish boy hadn’t had the chance to get his adrenaline pumping after their little rendezvous earlier.

“Feeling alright, love?” Colin murmured and sipped at his butterbeer to wash down the last of his bread.

“Yeah,” Seamus mumbled into his neck, and Colin smiled at the feeling of his lips against his neck. “It’s just… Merlin, Colin. That spar with Neville… Was it…”

“One of the Others, yeah,” he supplied easily. “A man. He had fighting experience, I think.”

“Is that going to happen often?” Seamus wondered aloud. “It was like you were a whole other person. It was scary, Colin.”

It was like being whole.

 

* * *

 

Colin’s mind was on fire. That was the only way it worked to describe the feeling of being in the same room as Harry Potter, Boy Who Lived. It wasn’t the same butterflies of his earlier Hogwarts years, but something entirely mental. Colin knew, without a doubt in his heart, that Harry Potter was one of the Others in his mind.

He was in the middle of talking to Neville about the Room, but Harry’s eyes kept flickering over the crowd, landing on him, again and again. Colin could feel Harry’s confusion, his pain, his weariness and grief and heart-breaking determination to try and end this war and still save everyone. The 6th year wanted to drag Harry to a hammock and make him sleep for weeks.

Seamus’ voice next to him brought him out of his pseudo plans to kidnap the Boy Who Lived for much needed bed rest.

“No!” Colin’s boyfriend said happily, “It’s a proper hideout, as long as one of us stays in here, they can’t get at us, the door won’t open. It’s all down to Neville. He really _gets_ this room. You’ve got to ask for _exactly_ what you need - like, ‘I don’t want any Carrow supporters to be able to get in’ - and it’ll do it for you! You’ve just got to make sure you close the loopholes! Neville’s the man!”

Neville really had become popular in the last year, at least among the rebels at Hogwarts. It was quite the sight to see the chubby boy who lost his toad every other day become the strong man he was now. And still as modest as ever, it seemed.

“It’s quite straightforward, really,” Neville rubbed the back of his neck. “I’d been in here about a day and a half, and getting really hungry, and wishing I could get something to eat, and that’s when the passage to the Hog’s Head opened up. I went through it and met Aberforth. He’s been providing us with food, because for some reason, that’s the one thing the room doesn’t really do.”

Ron Weasley proceeded to shock everyone with his knowledge of Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration, and then the others went back to filling the ‘Golden Trio’ in on the latest. Colin just watched Harry. Watched the way he moved, as familiar as the palms of his hands. And Harry watched him discreetly.

And then phantom pain burned through his forehead as he saw Harry clutch his head. And Colin jumped through the door he knew was Harry’s.

The Shrieking Shack was still as awful as he’d seen in the scant days of sneaking in for ghost stories as a fifth year, but Voldemort was a new addition. His image seemed to meld with Harry’s in the creepiest, most unnatural way possible. Harry stared out at him from red eyes with slit-pupils, and gave a scream of inhuman rage. Then they were both slammed back into their own bodies, Harry refusing help for the mission that Colin knew they had to do alone.

Seamus’ grip on his hand tightened, though it might have just been his own anger at Harry for leaving them all out of something so important. Colin wanted to grab Seamus and shake him out of his determination of going anywhere near the Dark Lord. His mind was still reeling from the out-of-body experience, migraine intensified three-fold, and he wondered vaguely how Harry dealt with this kind of thing so often.

“We got your message, Neville! Hello you three, I thought you must be here!” Luna Lovegood stepped out of the portrait to Aberforth’s, followed instantly by Dean Thomas.

Colin’s breath caught, instantly forgetting about what had just happened. Seamus roared like their House’s emblem and near tackled the black boy in his delight. It was something that they talked about in the wee hours of the morning, tipsy on firewhiskey; Dean’s shapely lips, his cheekbones, tight arse, and the way his hands could swallow you up whole. They never went further than that, both of them too afraid to be rejected. A warm glow settled into him at the sight of his boyfriend and their mutual crush hugging.

“Hi everyone!” Luna said happily again. “Oh, it’s great to be back!”

“Luna,” Harry said, and Colin could feel the fact that his thoughts weren’t all together yet. “What are you doing here? How did you -”

“I sent for her,” Neville said, holding up the old fake Galleon from the DA’s early days. “I promised her and Ginny that if you turned up, I’d let them know. We all thought that if you came back, it would mean revolution. That we were going to overthrow Snape and the Carrows.”

No, no, Colin thought to himself. This is revolution on a country-wide scale, now. But Hogwarts will be the battleground, I’m sure.

More people were climbing out of the portrait hole. Colin was swept up in Harry’s feelings for Ginny, suddenly in love with a girl he’d hardly talked to since fifth year. Harry’s fear and shame washed over him when talk began of helping the Trio down the Dark Lord. And then he opened his mouth.

“Alright,” Harry said quietly. “Okay!”

 

* * *

 

McGonagall tried to make him go, but he refused. Casting a glamour over glamour over glamour, Colin hid amongst the of-age students and kept as near to Harry as possible. The night drug on, students showering spells over the walls of Hogwarts, where the battles raged. Voldemort had only promised not to come into Hogwarts, after all, and he kept that promise at least.

Throughout it, he could feel the Others reacting to his and Harry’s emotions. He saw glimpses of them in the corners of his eyes every second, saw flashes of places he wasn’t at, but he had to be in the present, in his place, if he wanted to win this war. So he tried his best to block them for the first time, succeeding only in that he no longer disappeared from his place. A small relief at best.

He kept an eye on Harry’s emotions, though. His feeling of realization, the incredulity over Hermione and Ron’s untimely snog, the brief horror of one of Malfoy’s goons dying in spelled fire…

It was that, which pulled him away, a moment too-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry.
> 
> [ Planning and Table of Contents](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1D-RXZg9ruCNfnLeVUkW6Y4fU-OhxmlkyetWRut1vWeU/edit?usp=sharing)


	3. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is war, but Harry must continue on towards the end.

**_May 1st, 2015_ **

Harry moved in a haze, pulling the wreckage of a corridor off of him. His forehead was bleeding, and for once, it wasn’t because of his scar. Something burned fire and electricity up his spine in his leg - had he broken something? Maybe, but it was hard to compare that pain to the pain in his mind. The things that he’d tried so hard not to think about, the migraines and the visions without Voldemort’s help, the feelings that weren’t his own - the moment he stepped foot back in Hogwarts, they had only become stronger.

And right now, there was excrutiating pain, like the times Snape had ripped into his mind for ‘Occlumency lessons,’ only doubled. Like someone had reached into his skull and ripped away a piece of him. It made his hands stumble as he pulled away rocks from his legs and he wiped blood out of his eyes. His foot.

The feeling had come only moments before the corridor exploded. He hadn’t had the mind to shield himself, he was lucky that he still had the wand. But looking at his foot, Harry wished he had some forethought. It was mangled and bloody and the physical pain seemed to triple at the sight of it. He screwed up his face to hold back tears and pointed his current wand at his foot. Merlin would this hurt.

“ _Vulnera Sanentur_ ,” he traced Malfoy’s wand across the gashes of his foot and up his leg. The sudden onslaught of pain had him clench his jaw and start to cry with no remorse. Two more and then Episkey. “ _Vulnera Sanentur_. _Vulnera Sanentur_!”

There was a cry behind him, an agonized cry that made his stomach drop and his blood run cold. He had to go.

“ _Episkey_!” Harry let out a strangled scream, muffled into his arm. And then he stood up and went to where he saw Hermione stumbling.

Percy and Ron were surrounding Fred and crying. Oh Merlin. No.

The haze was back. Fred was dead. He was dead. Harry was dead. No, wait, Harry wasn’t dead, was he? He was standing here, feeling pain. Fred was the dead one. Oh Merlin. Fred.

Ron grabbed Hermione and him and pulled them down, and away. Why? Harry looked and saw spells being shot into the corridor through the hole in the corridor. He should have noticed that.

“Percy!” Ron raged, face pale white under all the grime and blood and smoke. “Percy, you can’t do anything for him! We’re going to-”

Hermione screamed next to him, and Harry reacted a beat slower than normal. It felt like the world was under a film and he was the one cut out of it, or maybe the opposite. There was a spider crawling into the corridor. He had to do something.

Ron hit the spider first with a spell, Harry’s a moment behind, blowing the spider back out of the hole and into the darkness again. But Harry could hear the clicking and voices of more.

“There’s more!” he strangled out of his own throat.

They half stumbled, half ran, carrying Fred’s body down the corridor. Body. Fred’s body. Oh, Merlin. Fuck. They hid Fred - the body - Fred - in a small niche of the corridor, behind a suit of armor, and Percy was suddenly gone. Harry wondered, somewhere, where he had gone. Hermione and Ron had disappeared, too. Did they die, too?

He wanted to lie down and go to sleep. Sleep away this war and the pain and the death. Vaguely, he wondered where Colin was. The boy who made his nerves feel electrified.

“I wanna help - I wanna kill Death Eaters -”

That was Ron. Harry turned, and saw two shapes struggling behind a tapestry. He joined Hermione and Ron there, all of them covered in grime and grief.

“Ron, we’re the only ones who can end it! Please - Ron - we need the snake, we’ve got to kill the snake!” Hermione’s hands were vicegrips on Ron’s biceps, holding him in place even as his struggles seemed to drain as grief replaced rage. “We will fight! We’ll have to, to reach the snake! But let’s not lose sight now of what we’re supposed to be d-doing! We’re the only ones who can end it!”

Hermione was crying, too, just like Harry was and just like Ron was. None moved to wipe their tears, only trying to even their breathing. Harry knew he had to be in the present. He pulled himself out of the pain that resonated somewhere deep inside him, a feat that had new tears leaking out the corners of his eyes, and clenched his fists had enough his nails made cuts in his palms.

They were looking at him, Hermione speaking. “You need to find out where Voldemort is, because he’ll have the snake with him, won’t he? Do it, Harry - look inside him!”

Harry closed his eyes and found himself standing in a gleaming white room. Or, no. A large suite with walls of light grey stone and white marble floors, with a living area and a sleeping area. This was where Voldemort was? No, that couldn’t be right.

“‘Ello?”

Harry spun around to stare. A Beauxbatons student? The student, she was as tall as him, dark skinned with a crooked nose, and seemed to have been doing her hair, which was valiantly trying to pull a mass of frizzy dark brown hair into a braid. She was only wearing the blue dress of Beauxbatons, the jacket lay across a couch with clawed feet nearby.

Light from the tall, french windows that were open fell across them, the breeze ruffling the curtains and their hair. She made Harry’s nerves calm and start in the same way Colin had done.

“Are you alrig’t?” she asked, coming forward a step. Harry didn’t move. “You look like you’ve been in battle.”

“I - I was,” Harry whispered, giving the room a closer look.

The area they were in was part of the edge of the sleeping area, the floor a foot higher than the living area. There was a ivory vanity with a large mirror, covered in tubes and bottles, and a Queen-sized four-poster bed made of the same wood to their left. It was unmade, clothes and books and a wand strewn across it haphazardly. The girl moved quickly, gaining his attention.

She was closer now, examining the bruises and blood and gashes on him, as much as she could. He should be leaving. Be trying to find Voldemort.

“I have to go,” he said.

“Wait!” she grabbed his hand even as he closed his eyes and tried to think of Voldemort. “You’re injured!”

The Shrieking Shack again. No screaming this time.

He rolled his wand in his hand, pondering.

“My Lord,” the speaker’s voice cracked in its desperation. Lucius Malfoy, the one he had just punished, was propping himself up in the corner. “My Lord...please...my son…”

“If your son is dead, Lucius, it is not my fault,” Voldemort spoke. “He did not come and join me, like the rest of the Slytherins. Perhaps he has decided to befriend Harry Potter?”

“No - never,” Malfoy’s whisper was barely heard.

“You must hope not.”

“Aren’t - aren’t you afraid, my Lord, that Potter might die at another hand but yours?” Malfoy was trying too hard, they both knew it. “Wouldn’t it be...forgive me...more prudent to call off this battle, enter the castle, and seek him y-yourself?”

“Do not pretend, Lucius,” Voldemort’s hiss was as silky smooth as barbed wire. “You wish the battle to cease so that you can discover what has happened to your son. And I do not need to seek Potter. Before the night is out, Potter will have come to find me.”

He turned his attention away, stared at his wand a moment, and then ordered Malfoy to fetch him Snape. He knew how to rectify the situation of the Elder Wand, and he needed Snape to do it. Lucius stumbled away like the scared pig he was.

He was about to speak to Nagini when he saw her. A Beauxbatons student, watching from the corner, eyes wide and terrified, half-dressed. Voldemort’s eyes narrowed, she stood just behind the glittering protective orb he had encased Nagini in. He raised his wand -

Harry let out a gasp and opened his eyes, reaching for the hand of the Beauxbatons student who had been about to be Crucioed. She gripped his hand tightl and they stared at each other, even as Harry whispered what he’d seen.

“He’s in the Shrieking Shack,” Harry said as the French person wiped blood off his forehead to stare at the angry, red, lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead. “The snake’s with him. It’s got some sort of magical protection around it. He’s just sent Lucius Malfoy to find Snape.”

Hermione was outraged as the foreign student held his cheek in her palm. He unconsciously leant into it and the comfort it offered.

“He’s not - he’s not even fighting?” she kept her voice down, but it was still a shriek of rage.

“He doesn’t think he needs to fight,” Harry replied. “Ruddy bastard thinks I’m going to go to him.”

“But why?”

“He knows we’re after the Horcruxes,” he told her, as the French student’s eyes widened at the words in horror. How did she know about them? Why weren’t his friends questioning her presence, even?

Maybe he was hallucinating her. Maybe he had finally gone ‘round the bend. It wouldn’t surprise him these days.

“You stay here and look after Hermione,” Ron ordered. “I’ll go and get it -”

Harry grabbed the back of his jumper and didn’t let him leave.

“No,” he said in a crystalline hard voice.

He threw the cloak over the four of them and they ran.

 

* * *

 

The cold of the Dementors still sat the edges of his mind, even as he approached Snape, who was bleeding out. The man who killed Dumbledore, the man who let the Carrows have their way torturing children… And as much as he’d wanted to kill him before, Harry didn’t want Snape to die like this. If anything, he wanted to be the one to kill him. Snape was a horrible person, even putting aside Dumbledore’s murder and the past year. But no one deserved death via Nagini.

“What do I do?” he whispered to himself as he tried to staunch the bleeding with his hands.

“Let me,” an accented voice said, and he’d almost forgotten she was here.

Suddenly, he was not just he. They pulled out Malfoy’s wand, began casting.

“ _Vulnera Sanentur_ ,” they spoke, dragging the tip along Snape’s throat, where Nagini had struck. “ _Anapneo_!”

Blood was pulled out of Snape’s mouth like it had a mind of its own before splattering off to the side.

“ _Ferula_ ,” bandages wrapped around Snape’s neck even as they cast a cutting charm at his front, pulling the shirt apart. “ _Diffindo_!” A small cut appeared in his stomach.

“ _Dilitírio travíxte_ ,” they placed their wand at the bleeding cut and pulled back slowly. Following the tip of the wand was a horrid, green-colored liquid. When their arm was as far back as it could go, they flicked it away and didn’t watch it splatter and begin to eat away at wood.

They used the spell four more times before color began returning to Snape’s face.

“ _Episkey_ ,” they sighed as they spoke, watched the cut disappear.

Snape was nearly passed out from exertion, but he would live. Even so, he tried to speak.

“Take.... it… Take… it….”

He was crying silver, they noticed. Silver gushed out his mouth and nose, too. Hermione shoved a conjured flask into their hands, and they began to fill the flask with their patient’s memories.  When it was full, Snape’s eyes flickered closed as he went dead to the world, but not dead. They cast a supervising charm on him despite this.

They all sat there, even as they became he and she, as the french one sat exhausted next to him, they leaned into each other. Harry’s mind was filled with new knowledge, years of learning Healing in his head. He put a stopper in the flask. When Voldemort’s cold, high voice spoke, they all jumped in fear, looking around. But the Dark Lord was nowhere in sight.

“You have fought valiantly,” the Dark Lord’s voice reverberated throughout the walls and through them. “Lord Voldemort knows how to value bravery.

“Yet you have sustained heavy losses. If you continue to resist me, you will all die, one by one. I do not wish this to happen. Every drop of magical blood spilled is a loss and a waste.

“Lord Voldemort is merciful. I command my forces to retreat immediately.

“You have one hour. Dispose of your dead with dignity. Treat your injured.

“I speak now, Harry Potter, directly to you. You have permitted your friends to die for you rather than face me yourself. I shall wait for one hour in the Forbidden Forest. If, at the end of that hour, you have not come to me, have not given yourself up, then battle recommences. This time, I shall enter the fray myself, Harry Potter, and I shall find you, and I shall punish every last man, woman, and child who has tried to conceal you from me. One hour.”

Harry felt cold. He didn’t look up from the Beauxbatons student’s lap, where her hands clutched tightly at her skirt.

“Don’t listen to him,” he heard Ron say.

“It’ll be all right,” Hermione agreed. “Let’s - let’s get back to the castle, if he’s gone to the forest we’ll need to think of a new plan. - “

She looked at Snape’s unconscious form. Then, she cast a protective spell and illusion over him, hiding him from anyone who might look for him. They stumbled their way back to the castle, around the wreckage. There was no one in sight, but they went directly to the Great Hall. It would always be a place of gathering, even in these terrible times.

The dead were laid out in a row in the Hall. Families and friends grieved. The Weasleys were surrounding Fred’s body, and without a word, his two best friends went to them. Harry stood with the brunette next to him. Harry looked at the two bodies next to Fred and felt his gut try to rip out of him. Unbidden, tears crawled out and Harry bit his lip to try not to sob.

And then he saw a lone body that Seamus Finnigan and Dean Thomas sat next to, holding each other as they grieved. Colin Creevey had snuck back in and died. Harry’s knees buckled, but the hallucination caught him and held him up. They turned and left.

They ran to the Headmaster’s Office in a haze similar to the one he’d had during and after the explosion and Fred’s death. Because of Colin. And looking at the student beside him, her now grimy dress and blood splattered cheek - when had that happened? - he knew she felt the same.

When he pulled himself out of the Pensieve later, she had disappeared and he was on his own for his own death. All on his own.

 

* * *

 

“Colin,” the whisper was loud in the vast whiteness of Kings Cross.

“Harry,” the other boy whispered, before throwing himself at Harry and holding him tightly. “Oh, Harry.”

“Am I dead?” Harry asked, voice muffled in Colin’s shoulder and hair.

“Yes and no,” Colin told him, pulling them away from the gross bundle underneath the bench that had maybe once been a child.

“What?”

“This is the place between, the crossroad, the station,” Colin told him in a hushed voice. “We don’t have much time. I need to tell you something.

“You were a Horcrux, Harry, and you had to die, but you don’t have to stay. I hope you don’t stay, because you’re not just you anymore. Do you remember the migraines? The feelings that weren’t your own, people that and places that no one else saw?”

“Yes,” Harry’s thoughts went to the Beauxbatons student. “I do.”

“Alright. Now, imagine someone’s soul was in several different bodies,” Harry made a noise of horror, he’d nearly gotten all the Horcruxes, there couldn’t be more. “No, no, not like a Horcrux. Like the soul is too big for just one body. So it has more. That’s what’s happening. Our soul was reborn and we woke up. You’re not just you anymore.”

“We?” Harry questioned, pulling back to stare at Colin and his face, unblemished in death. “What do you mean, Colin?”

“When we were in the same room, it felt right, didn’t it?” Colin questioned, but didn’t wait for a reply. “Harry, we were of the same soul. But now I’m dead, and there are only six other than you left. Protect them Harry. You need each other. There are people out there who would kill us for being what we are, in the Muggle world and the Wizarding one.”

And in this in between place, he understood.

“You have to go back,” Colin told him. “Our other selves won’t be able to deal with the death of two.”

Harry nodded, though that wasn’t his only reason for deciding. After all, there was a war to finish, a war Colin had died for. He pressed his forehead to Colin’s and closed his eyes, taking in this one last moment of peace. And Colin kissed him - not of romance or fire, but of comfort, to try and say goodbye for the last time.

“Take care of my boys, Harry,” he added, and Harry’s mind went to Seamus and Dean.

“Of course.”

And then he woke up on the grass, lying still and trying to barely breathe.

“The boy… Is he dead?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't misunderstand, I actually really hate Snape. But for the sake of the story, he lives. Which might seem mean, seeing as how everyone else that died in canon is dead, but this is the one Harry could be there for. So yeah.
> 
> [ Planning and Table of Contents](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1D-RXZg9ruCNfnLeVUkW6Y4fU-OhxmlkyetWRut1vWeU/edit?usp=sharing)


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